Republicans in Congress revoked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) privacy rule against strong opposition from Democrats who regard the rule as essential for consumer privacy. Conservatives call the law duplicitous and unnecessary. Republicans and telecom industry groups argue that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), not the FCC, traditionally protected consumer privacy.

The privacy bill would repeal regulations adopted in October by the FCC under the Obama administration. The regulation required internet services providers (ISPs) to protect consumer data more stringently than content providers such as Google and Facebook. The FCC required internet providers to obtain consumer consent before using location data, financial information, health, information, and web history for advertising.

Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, who opposes the FCC’s broadband privacy rule:

“This is a deliberate disinformation campaign from the usual suspects from the tech-left and the media, and they’re completely misrepresenting the issue, and the conservatives are falling for the fake news narrative. … Up until 2015, the FTC protected consumer privacy, and then the FCC Net Neutrality order eviscerated the consumer protections at the FTC by pre-empting FTC’s jurisdiction.

“The FCC then came around and hammered ISP’s with draconian regulations that do not apply to Google or Facebook. … It’s insane that Google and Facebook have a near duopoly in the advertising game and they have less stringent rules in terms of what they can do with your private information.” …

The president of the American Commitment said that Google is trying to rig the system against ISPs. “Google has this whole array of left-leaning groups defending their favorite regulations that put them in their favor,” he claimed. …

“This whole fight against the ISPs is a sideshow, by far the biggest threat to consumer privacy is Google that has trackers on over 60 percent of all websites. Google owns YouTube, and they have trackers everywhere, and they’ve shifted the focus of the debate to issues that don’t regulate Google.”

See previous coverage here, which presented the ISP-FCC sideshow without even mentioning Google. Hmmm. Looks like this is more about the Democrats doing the bidding of Google and Facebook, giving them special privileges. Can ISPs collect information about us? How much? And Google and Facebook?